This invention relates to the field of wireless communication, and more specifically, to the generation of a reference signal useful for determining receive weights for spatial processing in the presence of frequency offsets and for demodulating a received signal in the presence of frequency offsets.
Cellular wireless communications systems are known, wherein a geographical area is divided into cells, and each cell includes a base station (BS) for communicating with subscriber units (SUs) (also called remote terminals, mobile units, mobile stations, subscriber stations, or remote users) within the cell. We have previously described cellular systems that have BSs that include an array of antenna elements and spatial processing means. When used as receivers, the array of antenna elements introduce multiple versions of each signal, each of these versions comprising the composite of all the co-channel signals together with interference and noise. With multiple antennas, the relationship in both amplitude and phase of a signal of interest from a particular remote user to the interfering co-channel signals (i.e., signals from other remote users) will be different in each of the antenna signals due, for example, to geometric considerations, both because the antennas are separated by some distance, and, in some cases, because the different remote users also are separated. Using such an antenna array, spatial processing by weighting the received signals in amplitude and phase by different weights provides many advantages, including the possibility of spatial division multiple access (SDMA) techniques, in which the same xe2x80x9cconventional channelxe2x80x9d (i.e., the same frequency channel in a frequency division multiple access (FDMA) system, timeslot in a time division multiple access (TDMA) system, code in a code division multiple access (CDMA) system, or timeslot and frequency in a TDMA/FDMA system) may be assigned to more than one subscriber unit.
Some examples of a cellular system are digital systems which use variants of the Personal Handy Phone System (PHS) protocol defined by the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) Preliminary Standard, RCR STD-28 (Version 2) December 1995, and digital systems that use the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) protocol, including the original version, 1.8 GHz version called DCS-1800, and the North American 1.9 GHz personal communications system (PCS) version called PCS-1900.
When a signal is sent from a remote unit to a base station (i.e., communication is in the uplink), the base station having a receiving antenna array (usually, and not necessarily the same antenna array as for transmission), the signals received at each element of the receiving array are each weighted, typically after downconversion (i.e., in baseband), in amplitude and phase by a receive weight (also called spatial demultiplexing weight), this processing called spatial demultiplexing, or spatial processing, all the receive weights determining a complex valued receive weight vector which is dependent on the receive spatial signature of the remote user transmitting to the base station. The receive spatial signature characterizes how the base station array receives signals from a particular subscriber unit in the absence of any interference. This invention is described for uplink communications in a cellular system, although the techniques certainly are applicable to the design of any receiver for any digitally modulated signal where it is desired to reduce the effects of frequency offset.
In systems that use antenna arrays, the weighting of the baseband signals either in the uplink from each antenna element in an array of antennas, or in the downlink to each antenna element is called spatial processing herein. Spatial processing is useful even when no more than one subscriber unit is assigned to any conventional channel. Thus, the term SDMA shall be used herein to include both the true spatial multiplexing case of having more than one user per conventional channel, and the use of spatial processing with only one user per conventional channel. The term channel shall refer to a communications link between a base station and a single remote user, so that the term SDMA covers both a single channel per conventional channel, and more than one channel per conventional channel. The multiple channels within a conventional channel are called spatial channels. For a description of SDMA systems that can work with more than one spatial channel per conventional channel, see, for example, co-owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,378 (issued May 7, 1996) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,642,353 (issued Jun. 24, 1997) entitled SPATIAL DIVISION MULTIPLE ACCESS WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, Roy, III, et al., inventors, both incorporated herein by reference; and co-owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,592,490 (issued Jan. 7, 1997) entitled SPECTRALLY EFFICIENT HIGH CAPACITY WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, Barratt, et al., inventors. The Parent Patent describes demodulation in a SDMA system that has only one spatial channel per conventional channel.
SDMA systems use spatial processing as the backbone to improve system capacity and signal quality. In the Parent patent, we described generating a reference signal from the received antenna signals, and how the reference signal can then be used to determine the spatial demultiplexing weights. In such a system, the performance of the spatial processor depends on many factors, including:
The input signal-to-noise ratio (SNR);
The number of interferers or carrier-to-interference ratio (CIR);
The spatial correlation between the users; and
The quality of the reference signal.
Each of these will now be briefly explained. The input SNR at the antenna elements is determined by the transmitted power of the subscriber unit, the antenna gains, the path losses, and other RF effects.
The input CIR is determined by the transmitted power of the subscriber unit, and the powers of the other users and interferers occupying the same conventional channel (e.g., same frequency band) or emitting energy in that channel.
The reference signal is the replica of the transmitted signal that is generated at the receiver to train the demultiplexing weights for the signals received by the antenna array elements. The quality of the reference signal determines the nulling ability of the array. In the uplink, the improvement in the nulling ability of the array results in an increase in the output SINR. Therefore if the quality of the reference signal is improved, the BER performance in the uplink is improved. Improving the quality of reference signal generation and demodulation is the subject of this invention.
The receive (copy) weights may be determined from samples of the input signal and from the reference signal.
Thus there clearly is a need for improved demodulation and reference signal generation methods and systems for use in communication systems that include an antenna array and spatial processing.
The Parent Patent described the use of a demodulator/reference signal generator that tracked the frequency offset from sample to sample by relaxing the phase expected from the modulation scheme back towards the actual phase of the input signal. The present invention extends these methods.
An object of the present invention is a reference signal generation method for use in communication systems that include an antenna array and spatial processing.
Another object of the present invention is for a demodulation method for use in communication systems that include an antenna array and spatial processing.
Yet another object of the present invention is for a reference signal generation method for use in an alternating projections method for determining weights for spatial processing in a communications station that includes an array of antennas and means for applying spatial processing.
Briefly, for a signal transmitted to the communications station from a remote station, the method includes weighting the signals received at the antenna elements of the antenna array of the communications station to form a copy signal corresponding to the signal from the particular remote station, the weighting using a spatial weight vector corresponding to the particular remote station, and determining samples of the reference signal by, at each sample point, constructing an ideal signal sample from the copy signal at the same sample point, the ideal signal sample having a phase determined from the copy signal at the sample point, with the phase of the ideal signal sample at an initial symbol point set to be an initial ideal signal phase, and relaxing the phase of the ideal signal sample towards the copy signal sample phase to produce the phase of the reference signal. The spatial weight vector is initially some initial weight vector and is determined from the received antenna signals and from the reference signal. The phase of the ideal is determined from the phase of the reference signal at the previous sample point for which the phase is determined, and from a decision based on the copy signal. In one implementation, the reference signal is determined in the forward time direction, and in another implementation, the reference signal samples are determined in the backwards time direction. In one version, the step of relaxing the phase of the ideal signal sample towards the phase of the copy signal bN(n) corresponds to adding a filtered version of the difference between the copy signal phase and ideal signal phase. In another version, the step of relaxing the phase of the ideal signal sample towards the phase of the copy signal corresponds to forming the reference signal sample by adding to the ideal signal sample a filtered version of the difference between the copy signal and ideal signal.
In another aspect of the invention, a method for generating a reference signal for a modulated signal transmitted from a remote station to a communications station that includes an array of antenna elements and spatial processing means is disclosed, the method including: separating from the signals received at the antenna elements a copy signal corresponding to the signal transmitted by the particular remote station, the separating using an initial spatial weight vector corresponding to the particular remote station; determining from the terminal copy signal a reference signal having substantially the same frequency offset and time alignment as the received antenna signals; and computing a new spatial weight vector by optimizing a cost function, the cost function using the received antenna signals and the reference signal. For demodulation, the method further includes extracting the symbols of the modulated signal. The separating step and possibly the reference generating step may be repeated at least once, using in the repetition of the separating step the new spatial weight vector previously determined in the new weight computing step instead of the initial spatial weight vector. In one implementation, the reference signal generating further includes estimating a frequency offset and a timing misalignment of the copy signal; and correcting the copy signal for frequency offset and timing misalignment to form a corrected copy signal. In this, the reference signal determining step includes synthesizing a corrected reference signal that has substantially the same frequency offset and timing alignment as the corrected copy signal; and applying frequency offset and time misalignment to the corrected reference signal to form a frequency offset and time misaligned reference signal having the same frequency offset and time misalignment as the received antenna signals.
In one implementation, the step of determining the reference signal includes, for each of a set of sample points, constructing an ideal signal sample from the copy signal at the same sample point, the ideal signal sample having a phase determined from the copy signal at the sample point, with the phase of the ideal signal sample at an initial symbol point set to be an initial ideal signal phase, relaxing the phase of the ideal signal sample towards the copy signal sample phase to produce the phase of the reference signal; and producing the reference signal having the phase of the reference signal determined in the relaxing step.
In another implementation, the corrected reference signal synthesizing step includes coherently demodulating the corrected copy signal to form signal symbols; and re-modulating the signal symbols to form the corrected reference signal having substantially the same timing alignment and frequency offset as the corrected copy signal.